Short power outages hit Bangor, MDI

BANGOR, Maine — A Bangor Hydro-Electric Co. circuit that tripped Wednesday morning knocked out power to all customers on Mount Desert Island for about 10 minutes. A line break in Bangor 45 minutes later resulted in 1,325 customers losing power in the area of Hogan Road and Mount Hope Avenue.

“At about 10:15 a.m. we actually lost all of MDI for about 10 minutes,” company spokesman Bob Potts said Wednesday morning. “It was a circuit that was tripped and just had to be reset. The MDI customers were only out for 10 or 11 minutes.”

A large transmission line that feeds the island tripped and at one point more than 9,000 customers were without power, he said.

The first Bangor customer reported power problems at about 11 a.m. and within 45 minutes most of the 1,325 customers who lost power had it returned, Potts said.

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“It actually was a break in the line,” he said. “It should have rerouted to another line, but for whatever reason that didn’t happen. In addition to fixing the line, they are also going to have to figure out why that didn’t happen.”

At 11:45 a.m. only 68 customers were still without power, Potts said. The Bangor outage affected customers on Hogan Road, Mount Hope Avenue and several of the “tree streets” between Mount Hope Avenue and State Street.

“Bangor came back on line at around 12:30-1 p.m.,” Potts said Wednesday afternoon.

He said the break in the line was caused either by an earlier lightning strike “or a dead bird that they found in the transfer station.”